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So, I don’t really know exactly how Graves and ATDs and related things affect your metabolism but here is a general explanation of metabolism:
"burning calories" is literally your body taking sugars, carbohydrates, and other compounds from your food and using them to produce energy your body can use to function. "Energy" to the body is actually a MOLECULE that is required for the majority of chemical reactions that take place in our body. Many processes require this energy thats made, but for example muscle happens to have a really high energy consumption. So say you eat something, and you want to run, your body will take sugar from your food and make it into energy, the movement of your muscles is enough to use up some of that energy so the sugar you ate is now gone, or "burned" up by the muscle’s activity. But, if you ate a really big meal there may be some sugar left over. So if your body doesn’t need it right now it will, instead of making it into energy, store it in a different form for later use. So the more muscle mass you have, the more energy your muscles will require for activity, and there will be less left over that needs to be stored for future use. Metabolism is kind of your body’s "balance" between energy being used and energy being stored for later. The more energy you use up initially, the faster your metabolism is. The more energy you store for future use, the slower your metabolism is. One way your body stores energy for later use is in fat. So a slower metabolism can mean a person would have a harder time losing weight. The amount of energy your body uses is not the only thing that regulates metabolism though (of course because the body is so complicated there are so many different things controlling every aspect of life!). There is also hormonal control of metabolism, which is different for each person, and this is how Grave’s can enter the equation. When you are hyper, we can lose muscle mass due to muscle wasting, which can slow our metabolism. Even if we are losing weight because our muscle is disappearing, our body is not using energy that we are getting from our food, so this is why it can affect people differently weight-wise. I lost no weight with my Grave’s, instead I have steadily gained weight, even when I was consistently working out before my diagnosis. But, when we go hypo, through hormonal "communication" our body can tell us to consume less energy, and actually slow our metabolism too. I think, just from what I have read about them, ATD’s since their goal is to inhibit our thyroid function, make our bodies mimic a hypothyroid state, so our metabolism may slow when we take them as well, which is one cause of the weight gain from ATD’s.
I hope that maybe explained a little bit about our body’s metabolism. Maybe it was just more confusing. I have thought about this a lot lately, because my weight gain I think was one of the reasons my doctors were confused and didn’t think to check for Grave’s right away. I am definitely responding to the ATD’s differently than the majority of Grave’s patients too. My doctor described my weight on my first 3mo of methimazole as "rock steady". The number might be the same from week to week, but man does it feel like my pants are getting smaller! Its so frustrating.
But like I said this is just a general overview of metabolism, because there is so much more to it….because the body is amazing and sooo many things are happening in our body that we don’t even need to think about….they just happen! So cool.
” title=”Wink” /> I have always just been awed by biology, so excuse my corny-ness about the body!
